Climate-change skeptics like to call environmentalists “alarmists” because of their call for urgent action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The skeptics say the science is too uncertain, that there’s no rush to act, and those who argue otherwise are sanctimonious lefties out of touch with reality.For them it’s drill baby, drill.It’s a convenient way of dismissing bad news, which is why it’s important when traditionally conservative organizations like the International Energy Agency weigh in on the issue with…Read more...

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Annual property losses from hurricanes and other coastal storms of $35 billion; a decline in crop yields of 14%, costing corn and wheat farmers tens of billions of dollars; heat wave-driven demand for electricity costing utility customers up to $12 billion per year.
These are among the economic costs that climate change is expected to exact in the United States over the next 25 years, according to a bipartisan report released on Tuesday. And that’s just for starters: The price tag could soar to hundreds of billions by 2100.

WASHINGTON – The world’s two biggest polluters have signed what could be a groundbreaking agreement and “call to action” on the fight against escalating climate change.
The United States and China announced Sunday they would accelerate action to reduce greenhouse gases by advancing cooperation on technology, research, conservation, and alternative and renewable energy.

CALGARY — As Alberta’s NDP government rushes ahead with implementation of its climate change plan, a new study provides another measure of its exorbitant cost – a proposed cap on oilsands emissions would leave oil worth hundreds of billions in the ground, while doing little to reduce global greenhouse gases.

Yves here. To put none too fine a point on it, the most important steps to reduce carbon emissions would be a Marshall plan level effort to reconfigure living and resourcing arrangements so as to reduce energy demands, and to go particularly aggressively after the worst polluters (for instance, the cars you see spewing fumes, are surprisingly large contributors to total emissions from automobiles). But it’s much easier to go the Easter Island route and keep carrying on more or less as before until you hit insurmountable constraints.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday called climate change perhaps the world’s “most fearsome” destructive weapon and mocked those who deny its existence or question its causes, comparing them to people who insist the Earth is flat.
In a speech to Indonesian students, civic leaders and government officials, Kerry tore into climate change skeptics. He accused them of using shoddy science and scientists to delay steps needed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases at the risk of imperiling the planet.

David McNew/Getty ImagesRepresentatives from dozens of countries will convene at the United Nations April 22 to sign the Paris Agreement on climate change, which commits signatories to lower greenhouse emissions in the years ahead.

It could spell the end of an era. The International Energy Agency, which was hastily founded by developed oil-consuming countries back in the 1970s to keep an eye on global markets and ensure they never ran out of crude supplies, is now calling for new proposals that could see oil demand plateauing after 2020.

The development of low-carbon energy is progressing too slowly to limit global warming, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday.
With power generation still dominated by coal and governments failing to increase investment in clean energy, top climate scientists have said that the target of keeping the global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius this century is slipping out of reach.